The Statistics and Census Service released the results of the Survey on Manpower Needs and Wages for the first quarter of 2008. The survey coverage included the Manufacturing; Hotels & Restaurants; Financial Intermediation and Electricity, Gas & Water Supply sectors, but excluded own-account workers, as well as insurance agents and brokers not directly employed by insurance companies. The survey results were extrapolated from the information collected from 589 statistical units successfully interviewed. At the end of the first quarter of 2008, the Manufacturing sector had 25,869 paid employees, down by 12.4% over the same period of 2007, with 17,148 working in the Manufacture of Wearing Apparel. In March 2008, the average earnings (excluding bonuses and allowances) for full-time employees amounted to MOP 5,144, representing a year-on-year increase of 7.4%. Sewing machine operators of the Manufacture of Wearing Apparel earned MOP 3,536 in average. The Hotels & Restaurants sector took on 47,802 employees, up by 56.4% over the first quarter of 2007. The openings of several new hotels in the second half of 2007 increased the number of hotel employees to soar by 95.8% year-on-year to 31,245. The average earnings for full-time employees in March 2008 increased by 34.8% year-on-year to MOP 9,541, with the Housekeeping employees of hotels earning an average of MOP 5,426. The Financial sector had 5,389 paid employees, up by 10.7% compared with the first quarter of 2007, with 4,590 working in banks. The average earnings for full-time employees in March 2008 went up by 17.6% year-on-year to MOP 17,227 and that of the Bank tellers was MOP 10,061. The Electricity, Gas & Water Supply sector had 1,074 paid employees, up by 4.9% year-on-year. The average earnings for full-time employees decreased slightly by 0.8% over March 2007 to MOP 20,289. At the end of March 2008, the Manufacturing sector reported to have 4,238 job vacancies; Hotels & Restaurants sector had 5,030; the Financial sector had 340 and the Electricity, Gas & Water Supply had 33 vacancies. As regards recruitment prerequisites, 67.6% of the vacant posts in the Manufacturing sector required working experience; 97.3% of the vacancies in Financial sector and 69.7% in Electricity, Gas & Water Supply required senior secondary or higher in educational attainment. Besides Cantonese, Mandarin (43.4%) and English (40.9%) were the more preferable language skills in the Hotels & Restaurants sector; furthermore, 90.1% of the job vacancies in the Financial sector required knowledge of English.
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